Digital advertising, including mobile advertising, is widely used by businesses to market their products. Given the widespread availability of computing devices, digital advertising can be an extremely effective way for a business to reach a wide mass of potential customers and induce numerous users to purchase their products. By targeting users with effective advertisements, businesses can yield large financial returns from their advertisements.
To effectively target the right users with the right advertisements, current solutions generally collect and analyze user information, such as user purchasing histories, user identity and profile information, and other information that can provide descriptive information about the user. Moreover, current solutions collect such information about a user or segment to modify an advertisement campaign based on this information about the user or segment. This can allow businesses and advertisers to better target their advertisements, and modify the presentation parameters of their advertisements for better performance.
However, this use of private user information by the current solutions often creates privacy concerns for the user, as users are largely uncomfortable with their private information being collected, analyzed, and even shared beyond their knowledge and control. In fact, many users are even opposed to the sharing of the user's personal information that often takes place in current marketing and advertising schemes. Yet unfortunately, current solutions lack effective mechanisms for protecting the user's privacy when targeting users, and often share and disseminate private user information beyond the particular user's own control, knowledge, or even approval.